Health & Diet

By Swami Sivananda

Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was a doctor before he embraced the holy Order of Sannyasa. Even before he began his medical career, he enthusiastically conducted a medical journal called "Ambrosia" in which he published regularly articles on health and hygiene, diet and healing.

This volume from the pen of the sage-doctor is of the greatest

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lotus Prints
• Release date: Oct 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9788196536596

Book preview

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was a doctor before he embraced the holy Order of Sannyasa. Even before he began his medical career, he enthusiastically conducted a medical journal called Ambrosia in which he published regularly articles on health and hygiene, diet and healing.

This volume from the pen of the sage-doctor is of the greatest value, not only to the members of the medical profession, but to the layman as well who will gain immense knowledge from it, for enjoying good health and long life.

16th May, 1958 -THE DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY

Chapter 1

HEALTH IS ABOVE WEALTH

Health is the greatest wealth and asset for you. Without good health and strength, you cannot achieve success in life and God-realisation. Without good health, you cannot enjoy life. Good health comes from following definite rules. Those who ignore the rules of health, suffer much and die prematurely. Even for spiritual pursuits good health is the prerequisite. Without good health you cannot penetrate into the hidden depths of the vast ocean of life within and attain the final beatitude of life. Without good health you cannot wage war against the turbulent senses and the boisterous mind.

Health is wealth. Health is a covetable possession indeed. Good health is a valuable asset for one and all. You should have physical as well as mental health. If you do not possess good health you cannot prosper in any walk of life.

Health is that state in which a man sleeps well, digests his food well, is quite at ease, is free from any kind of disease or uneasiness. When you are in a state of perfect health all the organs, viz., heart, lungs, brain, kidneys, liver, intestines, work in perfect harmony and concord and discharge their functions satisfactorily. The pulse rate and the rate of respiration are in perfect order. The bodily temperature is normal. A healthy man smiles and laughs. He is cheerful and happy. He discharges his daily duties with ease and comfort. A healthy man is capable of doing work for a long time without getting fatigued. His bowels move very freely every day. He possesses the highest kind of mental and physical efficiency.

Health is a positive state. It is not simply negation of dis-ease. A healthy man can turn out more physical and mental work. He can practise good meditation for a long time. A healthy man need not be necessarily strong and robust and a strong and robust man need not be necessarily healthy. Health is a gift from Mother Nature or Lord who is the power behind life. Health is your birthright but not disease. It is as natural to be well as to be born.

Health is above all gold and infinite wealth and treasure. It enlarges the soul and opens all its powers to receive instructions and relish virtues. This Atman cannot be attained by a weak and unhealthy man. This is the emphatic declaration of the Upanishads. Emerson says, The first wealth is health. Give me health and a day I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. He who has good health has nothing more to wish for. He is really a blessed man. Ramalinga swami sings, I want a life with health and without disease. The first requisite in life is good health. Health is a sine qua non to every kind of enjoyment in life.

DIET AND HEALTH

The meals should be taken at regular hours and nothing is eaten in the intervals. After the stomach has digested a meal it requires an interval of repose, or it will soon be worn out by an excess of labour.

Regularity in the hours of meals cannot be too strongly insisted upon. The stomach should not be disappointed when it expects to be replenished. If disappointed, either from the action of its own secretions, or from a want of sustainment in its muscular action, even a diminished amount of food will be taken without appetite and will be sure to cause bad symptoms. Any change in the time of meals and the nature of the meals should be gradually made. Sudden changes in the nature of meals are highly disastrous to the health and should be entirely deprecated.

Simple wholesome food and only enough to maintain the proper weight for age and height—as much spent for fruit and fresh vegetables as for meat; a sufficiency, but not a great ex-cess of proteins or nitrogenous foodstuffs (which are tis-sue-builders or flesh-formers); carbohydrates or starches, fats or hydrocarbons (which are heat or energy producers) in proper hygienic proportions, minerals including lime and iron; a sufficiency of that vital growth stimulating element, vitamin; and last, but not the least, a proper balance in the week's menus of fuel foods, tissue-building foods, and regulating food—all will, doubtless, pave a long way in the practical achievement of splendid health, high vitality, and remarkable longevity.

You must practise dietetic rules, if you are to enjoy good health. Merely knowing the principles will not make or keep you well. You may believe ever so much in dietetic rules, may see others benefited by obedience to them; but, if you want health, vigour, and vitality for yourself, you must yourself lay hold of them.

The diet should be such as can maintain physical efficiency and good health. The well-being of an individual de-pends on perfect nutrition more than on anything else. Various sorts of intestinal diseases, increased susceptibility to infectious diseases, lack of high vitality and power of resistance, rickets, scurvy, anaemia or poverty of blood, beriberi, etc., are due to faulty nutrition. It should be remembered that it is not so much the climate as food which plays the vital role in producing a strong and healthy body or a weakling suffering from a host of diseases. An appreciable knowledge of the science of dietetics is essential for everybody especially for spiritual aspirants, to keep up physical efficiency and good health. Aspirants should be able to make out a cheap and well-balanced diet from only certain articles of diet. What is needed is a well-balanced diet not a rich diet. A rich diet produces diseases of the liver, kidneys and pancreas. A well-balanced diet helps a man to grow, to turn out more work, increases his body-weight, and keeps up the efficiency, stamina and a high standard of vim and vigour. You are what you eat.

Health, strength, stature, weight, capacity for endurance and hard work, physical and mental efficiency, output of work, power of resistance against disease—all these depend upon diet.

The well-being of man depends on perfect nutrition. A well-balanced and healthy diet only can produce perfect nutrition and can maintain physical efficiency and health.

A man is what he eats. If he takes wholesome, well-balanced diet, he is healthy, strong and efficient. He can turn out more physical and intellectual work. If the diet is faulty, he be-comes weak, sickly and inefficient. If he takes Sattvic food, he is endowed with Sattvic qualities. He is calm and pure. If he takes Rajasic food, he is passionate and turbulent. If he takes Tamasic food, he is dull and lethargic.

From faulty, ill-balanced diet or a diet which contains too much of one thing or too little of another, man suffers from mal-nutrition. Many diseases originate chiefly from malnutrition. Beriberi, scurvy, rickets, intestinal diseases, dyspepsia, anaemia, debility, diabetes and a host of ailments and increased susceptibility to diseases, all these are directly or indirectly attributable to faulty nutrition and errors in diet.

The right kind of food is most important. Half the illnesses of the nation are due to an ill-balanced diet. There is no mystery about diet. It can be learnt very easily. A correct diet is a fundamental factor in the maintenance of perfect health and a high standard of vitality. Good food is not expensive. A well-balanced diet is not costly. It is knowledge of dietetics that we hopelessly lack. The Ministers of Health should tackle this problem of diet for the young, adults and the convalescents. The Board of Education should train experts in dietetics.

The function of food is to supply the body with the materials necessary for the growth, maintenance, repair and efficient functioning of its various organs and structures and in this way to ensure the harmonious working of the whole human ma-chine at its highest level.

Force or energy is needed for the bodily movements and functioning of the various organs. The second purpose of food is to furnish the materials with which the body generates this energy. Heat is produced during the generation of energy and the warmth of the body is kept up by this heat.

NUTRITION AND HEALTH

Our knowledge of nutrition has been completely changed during the past thirty years. The discoveries of physiology concerning vitamins and other accessory food factors have made it possible to set up proper standard of nutrition.

Nutrition is the most pressing of all present-day problems in India. Every one of you should learn something of the simple truth of Nutrition and how to make the best use of such food-stuffs as are available. You will be benefited by such knowledge and you will be in a position to instruct others also.

Your welfare demands the provision of food which will satisfy the physiological needs of the body. Good food plays a vital part in the promotion of good health.

Your well-being depends more on perfect nutrition than on anything else.

Just as the engine of the motor car cannot work properly without efficient lubrication and good patrol, so also this engine of body and mind cannot work efficiently without good and proper food. There must be perfect growth of mind and body. Both mind and body should be able to turn out very useful work through their vigorous employment. Only then it can be said that you live well and you are perfectly healthy.

Rickets, beriberi, pellagra, night blindness, intestinal dis-eases, kidney diseases, pancreatic diseases, dropsy, anaemia, scurvy, osteomalasia, dental caries, disorders of pregnancy,—all these are directly or indirectly due to faulty nutrition. A well-balanced diet is necessary if growth and develop-ment are to take place normally. A badly fed child is often small and thin for its age. Its weight for height will be below average. It will succumb to disease quite easily. A child who is malnourished is not enthusiastic for work and play. It is dull and apathetic.

A well-fed man has a glossy skin and glow of health. Bright clear eyes are also a sign of satisfactory feeding and good nutrition. Spongy, bleedy gums suggest Vitamin C deficiency—mild scurvy—and call for, greater consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. Sore mouth and tongue, fissures in the tongue, etc., are due to vitamin B2 deficiency. They can be rapidly cured by taking more milk. The diet of the mass of the population of India is deficient in quality and often in quantity. Much ill-health and disease in India are attributable to malnutrition.

If you only give up your tea, coffee, smoking, chewing tobacco and aerated drinks, and if you replace your jams, sweets by milk, fruit, vegetables, brown bread, you will not only cut down your food bills but avoid disease and ill-health. You will have high standard of health, vigour, vim and vitality.

The high infant, maternal and general mortality rate is obviously due to malnutrition. If the mother is not fed properly, the newly born and the very young suffer most severely from the III-effects of malnutrition. The deficient maternal diet leads to lack of a necessary vitamin in breast milk. The milk of ill-fed mothers tends to be generally deficient in quantity and quality, so that it cannot meet the requirements of the growing infant. The anaemia of pregnancy associated with malnutrition is an important cause of maternal deaths.

Human beings and particularly children cannot thrive well on a diet composed largely of cereals such as rice, millet, etc., and not sufficiently supplemented by other foods. They must take fair quantities of foods like milk, green vegetables, fruits, etc. These are known as the protective foods, because they are rich in protein, vitamins and mineral salts and protect the body against diseases, which are produced when the diet is largely based on less nutritious foods such as milled rice. Infants and growing children, expectant and nursing mothers suffer much if their diet is faulty. Protective foods will protect them. Balanced diet will make them healthy and strong.

THE BODY MACHINE

This body is a wonderful machine. The parts of the ma-chine are very, very subtle, and delicate. You cannot get spare parts from companies. The skeleton supports the body. The muscular system aids locomotion and work.

The circulatory system which consists of the heart, the arteries, the veins and the capillaries conveys nourishment to various parts of the body. The respiratory system consists of the two lungs, the trachea or the wind pipe, the larynx or the wind-box and the bronchi and the bronchicies, the respiratory tubes. This does the function of breathing, purifies the blood, charges it with pure oxygen and throws out carbon dioxide.

The digestive system consists of the tongue, the mouth, the throat, the gullet, the stomach, the small and the large intestines. It helps digestion of food and throwing of the excreta.

The excretory system (urinary) consists of the kidneys, the ureters, the bladder and the urethra. It throws out the urine from the body. The large intestines throw out faecal matter.

The reproductive system consists of the external organ, the testes in the male, the vagina, the ovaries and the uterus in the female.

The nervous system consists of the brain, the spinal cord and the nerves. This controls the working of all the organs of the body. It controls and co-ordinates activity through conduction of impulses.

The integumentary system consists of the skin, the two sets of glands, the sweat glands which secrete sweat and the sebaceous glands which secrete sebum or fat, and the hairs on the body. The sebum keeps the skin soft and shining. The skin also breathes. It throws out waste products.

The endocrine system controls the activity of the tissues by chemical means, such as thyroid, suprarenals etc. They contain endocrine glands which are ductless, which secrete hormones and throw them directly into the blood.

Health means the harmonious working of all these different systems. Each system represents a wheel of the body-ma-chine. If one wheel gets diseased the whole machine is sympathetically affected. Man is uncomfortable. He cannot work efficiently. If one endocrine gland gets diseased there is a vicious circle.

All the organs are interdependent. The brain can function properly only if it is helped efficiently by the circulatory system, only if it gets proper supply of pure blood. The heart can function properly only if it gets good blood from the food. The food can be digested properly only if stomach, liver, pancreas, the intestines function properly.

Keep the body-machine in good working order through regular exercise, simple, but nutritious diet and